Just a Selfish Man
by The Grand Inquisitor
Summary: Zai Vessalius is a man of conviction and action. He is full of hatred for the man and creature that destroyed his world. He is a selfish man who tried to save a selfish world. Just a short dip into the mind of Zai and his reasons for doing what he did. (Spoilers warning)


_I do not own Pandora Hearts, I'm not awesome enough for that._

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 _I have heard of your hatred for me, but is it because you don't understand me? Or is it because you understand me far too well?_

They say that by trying to avoid your destiny you end up causing the exact thing you tried so hard to stop. Perhaps that is simply an excuse created to placate those who tried to change their fate and failed to do so, or perhaps it is the truth. Whatever the case I feel that in some small way this terrible truth or pale platitude defines me.

I am not an evil man whatever you might think, though perhaps history may paint me as such. Yet in many ways I am not a kind man either. To define myself I simply must say I am a selfish man just as is any other who has ever lived and breathed.

Cast me as a villain if you will, but I wish only to convey the one small truth I still hold within me.

As a young man I was ambitious and arrogant, and as I grew older that did not change. I believed the world was mine for the taking as a noble of the Vessalius house, and in some small way I was right. I took the piece of the world that was mine and held onto it tight. My world, I called it. My beloved world.

It was a world that was doomed from the start.

My truth is that I wanted to save that world, but there was another truth, one that would destroy it.

Imagine with me for the moment that you knew this terrible truth, the truth that could destroy everything you loved. A truth that sat hot and tight in your chest like a heavy weight, but a truth you could not speak. And then imagine this truth did destroy the things you loved one by one.

The death of your first-born son.

The death of your beloved wife.

The death of your sister-in-law.

The death of your nephew.

The death of your brother.

Tell me, what would you have done in the face of so much anguish, knowing that the truth you knew was only a small piece of something even bigger and more terrible?

Would you simply have accepted it? Or would you have tried to destroy that which would bring the world to its knees?

I must remind you once again, I am a selfish man. I chose to destroy the fate that would corrupt the world. I chose revenge.

It is a difficult path to walk, the long years of enduring and festering hatred, waiting for just the right moment to deliver the final blow. Revenge is deliberate. It is researched, planned, and enacted; but it runs the risk of that flame of hatred either dimming with time until the will to carry it out has simmered away or raging out of control and burning down everything else around it.

And every time I looked into those glittering green eyes I saw the smirk of a man who knew of the ruin that would befall me and the ruin that he would unleash upon the very world.

I hated the creature that people called my son. People may call me despicable for that, but they do not know the terrible truth. I may have caused him pain with my hatred, but that boy – that creature - has caused me more. He has caused the world more pain and death and destruction than I ever did. What right does he have to plead for mercy, to play the game of innocence?

I refuse to repent for any so-called sins in the face of the bigger sin of that boy.

History may call me a contemptible child killer, a man who murdered his own son, but I do not look for vindication in whatever comes after my death. The public will never learn the truth I now know, but I know it and that is all the vindication I need. I tried to stop the end of the world.

Jack Vessalius, Oz the B-Rabbit. They ripped a hole in the world and a hole in my heart. I cast the creature that caused all that into the abyss in the hopes that it would never happen again, that this world could live in peace.

But it was all in vain. The story of this world is far too twisted to end in such a peaceful way.

And so we come back to the beginning. I can only wonder now, if I had not cast Oz into the Abyss would all of this have happened? In some small way I must take responsibility for the beginning of the end that I tried to stop.

Perhaps if I was a less selfish man than I am I would not have taken Jack in at all, and that child would have frozen to death in the snow. But that is not the case; I am above all moved by my ego and my darkened heart.

Hatred and vengeance was the only path I could see that could get me what I wanted. I could never get back my precious wife and son and so I sought to destroy that which had destroyed them. There was no peace in it though, perhaps because my task was never completed.

In the end I am a man full of regrets and wounds. I am a man who has loved and lost. I am a man who has walked the hard road only to find it was a dead end that brought me nothing at all.

At least I was able to save my precious daughter, Ada. That is what my life amounted to: a selfish man abandoning his convictions and basic nature for something as juvenile as self-sacrifice.

But I am thankful that I died in such a way. I saved just a tiny piece of the world I loved so much. So call me what you will: vindictive old man, villain, murderer, but at least you cannot call me a coward.

I am simply a selfish man who tried to save a selfish world.

That, I find, is destiny enough for me.

 _So tell me, what do you think of me now?_

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 _Thoughts? Comments? I had fun exploring a bit of Zai's personality. He's an interesting guy and I think he deserves a little more sympathy than he gets (but he is definitely a jerk.) But he did try to stop Jack and that's gotta count for something._


End file.
